Beck Depression Inventory

The Beck Depression Inventory appears to be a very useful tool for clinicians to measure the severity of depression in adolescents and adults. However, we were not able to obtain a copy of the Beck Depression Inventory for an in-depth review of the BDI. The review of the BDI was done by viewing posted responses found in online forums for depression and the treatment of depression.

The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) is a 21 question test presented in multiple choice format which is designed to measure the presence and degree of depression in ages 13 and older. The BDI is one of the most widely used tests by clinicians to measure depression. The BDI is composed of items relating to symptoms of depression such as hopelessness, irritability, and morbid thoughts such as guilt, or feelings of being punished. The BDI also measures physical symptoms such as fatigue, weight loss, and lack of interest in sex.

There are three versions of the BDI which include the original BDI first published in 1961 and later revised in 1978 as the BDI-1A. The BDI-II, was published in 1996. The BDI is widely used as an assessment tool by health care professionals and researchers in a variety of settings.

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The creator of the Beck Depression Inventory was Dr. Aaron T. Beck. His work and study of depression drew attention to the importance of "negative cognition's": sustained, inaccurate, and often very intrusive negative thoughts about the self. In Beck's view, it was the case that these cognition's caused depression, rather than being generated by depression. On a side note, depression was once thought of as "inverted hostility against the self".

The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) is a 21-item test presented in multiple choice format which purports to measure presence and degree of depression in adolescents and adults. Each of the 21-items of the BDI attempts to assess a specific symptom or attitude "which appear(s) to be specific to depressed patients, and which are consistent with descriptions of the depression contained in the psychiatric literature." Although the author, Aaron T. Beck, is associated with the development of the cognitive theory of depression, the BDI was designed to assess depression independent of any particular theoretical bias.

Scoring The Beck Depression Inventory

Score: Produces single score indicating intensity of the depressive episode.

Each of the inventory items corresponds to a specific category of depressive symptom and/or attitude. Each category purports to describe a specific behavioral manifestation of depression and consists of a graded series of four self-evaluative statements. The statements are rank ordered and weighted to reflect the range of severity of the symptom from neutral to maximum severity. Numerical Values of zero, one, two, or three are assigned each statement to indicate degree of severity. Beck admits that there is no arbitrary cutoff score and the specific cutoff depends on the characteristics of the patients used and the purpose for which the inventory is given.

Beck Depression Inventory Reliability

Test-retest reliability has been studied in the case of 38 patients who were given the BDI on two occasions. It was discovered that the changes in BDI scores tended to parallel changes in the clinical reading of the depth of depression, indicating a consistent relationship between BDI scores and the patient’s clinical state. The reliability figures here were above .90. Internal consistency studies demonstrated a correlation coefficient of .86 for the test items, and the Spearman-Brown correlation for the reliability of the BDI yielded a coefficient of .93.

Beck Depression Inventory Validity

In assessing the validity of the BDI, the readily apparent face validity of the BDI must be addressed. The BDI looks as though it is assessing depression. While this may be quite advantageous, it may make it easy for a subject to distort the results of the test. Content validity would seem to be quite high since the BDI appears to evaluate well a wide variety of symptoms and attitudes associated with depression. One study addressing concurrent validity demonstrated a correlation of .77 between the inventory and psychiatric rating using university students as subjects. Beck reports similar studies in which coefficients of .65 and .67 were obtained in comparing results of the BDI with psychiatric ratings of patients.

Author: Aaron T. Beck.

Publisher: The center for Cognitive Therapy.